The Women’s March On Washington Is Over. What’s Next?

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WWR Article Summary (tl;dr)Nancy Kaffer from the Detroit Free Press shares her thoughts on this past weekend’s Women’s March. She also shares some of the stories of other Michigan women who traveled to D.C.

Detroit Free Press

It was a long ride home.

Plenty of time, on the bus back to Michigan, to consider the Women’s March on Washington. To share new stories with new friends, or to dissect one’s own role in the protest. To absorb the waves of media coverage and social media posts, from effusive to cynical. To calculate the success of the fledgling movement, or reflect on the path that led to Washington. To wonder if everything had changed, or if nothing had.

At Saturday’s march in Washington, and its sister marches in every U.S. state and around the globe, mostly women, mostly white, but millions strong, rallied against threats made by President Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans to dismantle the Affordable Care Act; to overturn the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade; to dilute the social safety net until it no longer serves as a safeguard; to harass and target immigrants, women, LGBT Americans, people of color, or anyone for whom myths about America’s past greatness are a hollow lie; to turn our schools into ideological experiments at the expense of our children.

By Sunday, the elation of the march had become firm resolve.

“I’m just not going to shut up,” said Cynthia Pickens, 62, of Northville, a retired mail carrier and owner of a catering business. Wyandotte resident and Episcopal preacher Colleen Lough, 59, used nearly the same words: “I will not sit down, I will not shut up. I will be heard.”

Josie Huss, a 22-year-old graduate student from Kalamazoo said: “I was staring at the speakers with tears in my eyes, wondering what are we going to do now? What if we are ignored? Then after the march, I turned on the TV and the news was wild about it and it was like … that was huge.”